At least it's dead when it comes to sharing items, which was one of the primary functions for me. The sharing options transformed it into a tight-knit, and effective information sharing community. A place for swapping animated .GIFS, silly news, and serious journalism updates. Now it's just a utilitarian tool for keeping track of my internet habits. It kind of sucks.

My initial rage at the integration of Reader into the now cemetery-like Google+ died down about 24 hours after the change. But I feel my friends and I are going through the withdrawal stages. Seriously, I've had so many run-ins this week where I excitedly went to share an item, only to realize the buttons to do so have vanished. The really important things I posted to Facebook, which only made me feel kind of dirty -- that's not how I want to use Facebook. And Google+ sharing lacks the simple, intuitive functionality that I prefer.

So I'm resolved to feel this way:

Actually, that image is from a fun and recurring graphic series that's popped up in my Google Reader over the past few days. I love it. I would have loved to share it with you sooner. Sry 2 say, it's not my fault.

Regardless, the world moves on and I must adapt. Perhaps this means more posts for this blog, a sliver of optimism I can pull from the fallout of this mess. Here are some other items I found interesting:

They aren't all serious shares, after all, it's kind of tough to care that much about the Bieber news (and the ever-pissy Andy Rooney death news didn't make the cut). But still, it was that mix of silly!stupid and serious shares that made going to Reader multiple times a day so much fun. For a couple of days Google was dead to me. Then I realized the middle ground, that unlike other social networking websites, Google kept the same look for years. I appreciate that, and I'll weigh that when considering my loyalty to Google (not that loyalty even matters when it comes to Google, it's fingerprints are on everything I touch).

The landscape changes, I suppose. And now that we're in this post-apocalyptic, post-Reader world, where sharing items lives in the black market of random emails and annoying Facebook spam, my mind turns to this response: